This week has been busy in all the best ways, but as a result my brain is pretty scrambled right now. I have a million thoughts running through my head but not enough mental energy to actually process them. I feel almost as though I float through each day without ever really touching my feet to the ground, my mind tethered by a loose cord above me, drifting through the clouds. I am continually frustrated by how few the hours are within each day, and I always have the feeling I’m forgetting something, even if I haven’t. (Though usually I have.)

I have a birthday this weekend. I’m celebrating tonight, but my actual birthday is on Sunday, which has me thinking of the last time my birthday fell on a Sunday:

Here’s to friends who will fly to Paris with you so that you can spend your twenty-first birthday hanging out with Disney characters.

[Conveniently, Disneyland Paris is the only maingate park (a.k.a. one with a castle) that serves alcohol. Perfect for a twenty-first birthday.]

[the best Big Thunder Mountain Railroad of all the Big Thunder Mountain Railroads]

[Le Château de la Belle au Bois Dormant]

[that vaulting!]

[I was just a little bit excited.]

[Did you know that the castle there has an Audio-Animatronic dragon underneath it? It doesn’t get much cooler than that.]

Actually, I spent my last two birthdays at Disneyland as well (in California, not Paris), but I’m pretty excited to spend this one with my friends in New York. Not that I don’t miss the Matterhorn (and on days like today, I think I’d prefer that fake alpine snow to the real stuff, which coated all the fall leaves last night and produced piles of sidewalk slush), but all in all, life is pretty good.

The best birthdays are a convergence of all the best elements of my ordinary life—a day in which I am grateful to be here, wherever “here” is at the moment. I remember one night in college, returning late to my dorm after a showing of Harry Potter in DeBartolo, realizing the clock had passed midnight—meaning it was now my birthday—and taking a detour with my friends to jump into a pile of leaves on North Quad in celebration of a new year of life. I remember the time my friends made me a cake and actually put 22 candles on it, which triggered the fire alarm in my dorm room. (Luckily we opened the windows before it set off the alarm for the whole building.) I remember family dinners and Oreo pie, trips to the movie theater with high school friends, the year I got a brand new pogo stick and immediately put it to use. One of the things I love about birthdays is that they’re an excuse to connect with people from all different corners of my life and bring them together. They’re also an opportunity for me to take notice of the wonderful things and people that surround me.

I’ll leave you with one more memorable birthday moment:

[Evidence that seven-year-olds can’t handle their sugar, especially when it comes in the form of a 101 Dalmatians birthday cake.]